Method of editing and circulating an electronic draft document amongst reviewing persons at remote terminals attached to a local area network

A method of editing an electronic document by a reviewing person at a terminal, in which the reviewing person adds to the electronic document displayed at the terminal, an attest pattern indicating that said reviewing person approves said electronic document and then sends said electronic document to a succeeding person for subsequent review of the electronic document or to an originator of said electronic document, said terminal being connected to other ones through a network means, each of said terminals being provided with a document editing function means for editing said electronic document and said attest pattern, a display means for displaying said document with said attest pattern, an input means used for inputting data and commands by a person, wherein said plurality of terminals communicate to one another through a data distributing means connected to said network means, the method comprising the steps of:

• sending a communication frame to said data distributing means from one of said terminals by which said electronic document is originated, said communication frame including the data of said electronic document, an attest pattern for the originator, at least one destination terminal address corresponding to said reviewing person, a sending terminal address corresponding to said originator of the electronic document and flag fields each for storing flag information indicating whether the review of said electronic document by one of the reviewing and originator persons is completed or not;
• sending said communication frame from said distributing means to one of the plurality of terminals selected on the basis of said destination terminal address, said sending address and said flag information;
• displaying said electronic document and the attest pattern of the originator, on a screen of said display means at one of a plurality of reviewing terminals which has previously received said electronic document from said distributing means;
• removing automatically from said electronic document any attest pattern previously added to said electronic document and displaying said electronic document having no attest pattern on the screen in response to an input of a request command for amendment of said electronic document from said reviewing person;
• amending said electronic document displayed on the screen and adding an attest pattern for said reviewing person to said electronic document in accordance with input operations by said reviewing person;
• and
• sending said communication frame to said distributing means, by said terminal which received said communication frame from said distributing means, after changing the flag information in one of said flag fields which is assigned for a person operating the terminal so as to indicate the reviewing is completed if the person has operated the terminal to add his attest pattern without amending said electronic document or after initializing all the flag information and previously appended attest patterns corresponding to the other person if the person has operated the terminal to amend the contents of said electronic document.